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This story takes a sideways glance at the complex relationship between a bestselling writer and his editor. Fortunately most authors’ experiences with editors have not been quite as unusual as those of the fictional mega-author featured in this story, but the familiar tension between art and commerce was clearly the inspiration for this fantastic tale. Tim takes the conventions of a classic thriller and twists them hard, until we are left with a punch line that is simultaneously fu
SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
“Give us the manuscript or we’ll kill your wife.”
Jim Masterson stared at the narrow man threatening him, trying to remember when they’d first met. A long time ago, before Jim was married. At least a year before he was published. A lifetime.
“All we want is the book, Jim.”
“It’s not finished.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Jim watched his editor of more than ten years help himself to one of the overstuffed chairs in front of the desk, carefully setting his briefcase on the hardwood floor. Carl Ransom had always dressed immaculately, even in the old days. Today it was a gray suit and cream silk shirt, the half-Windsor tight enough to squeeze any last vestige of humanity from his narrow frame.
Carl leaned forward to slide a computer out of his briefcase, a sleek titanium notebook that opened like a thinly veiled threat.
“Where did we first meet, Carl?”
The question threw the editor for a moment. He blinked a few times before the corners of his mouth turned. “The Four Seasons, breakfast. I was a junior editor at the time and you—”
“Just got my first publishing contract.”
Carl nodded as he busied himself with the laptop. “Feeling nostalgic, Jim?” He unceremoniously pushed a row of pencils to one side. “Jesus, after all these years, I still can’t believe you write with those things.”
“My readers haven’t complained.” Jim scooped the pencils up protectively and arranged them closer to his side of the desk. Ten number two’s, each sharpened to a perfect point, arrayed next to ten red Bic pens. Jim evenly spaced the pens and set them next to the neatly stacked pile of manuscript paper.
Carl reached into the briefcase again, then slid a small plastic card into a slot in the laptop. Tap, tap, tap. “They have these things called computers now.”
“The Internet’s distracting.”
Carl snorted. “Listen to you. For your next book remind me to get you a walker, maybe a hearing aid.”
Jim ignored him, listening to the susurrus of traffic three stories below. His office door was closed, as was his habit when writing. Normally his only company was the classical music from his stereo and the view, but today he’d made a mistake. He’d let someone inside his sanctuary.
“Voilà!” Carl spun the laptop around and slid it forward. “What do you see?”
Jim squinted at the monitor, where a rectangular window on the screen showed a video of a woman in a dress walking across a Manhattan street. He looked closer. The view was from several stories up, maybe four or five.
The woman carried a briefcase in her left hand. The briefcase didn’t have a shoulder strap and looked heavy, as if it were overstuffed with anything and everything a busy woman might need over the course of a day. It looked all too familiar.
Jim felt a knot tighten in his gut as his heart stopped. “That’s Emily.”
“Bravo.” Carl brought his hands together with a languid clap, clap. He leaned forward. His right index finger was poised over Return on the laptop’s keyboard. “And for bonus points, what do you see now?” The skin under his nail turned white as he mashed the key.
A red circle with two lines intersecting it appeared over the image of the walking woman as she made her way through a throng of pedestrians. Even as she dodged a man with a stack of boxes on a handcart, the animated crosshairs stayed on her.
“A team of snipers is tracking her progress for the next forty-five minutes.” Carl rubbed his hands together. “We know her routines, her regular appointments.” He made a theatrical turn of his wrist. “So unless we get the final pages in…forty-four minutes, Emily will be shot in the head.”
“How—” A trickle of sweat started down Jim’s spine as he looked at his editor’s ascetic face, searching for a smirk, some sign that a punch line was on its way. But Jim had never known Carl to have a taste for practical jokes. As utterly mad as it seemed, he knew this was real.
“Amazing what they can do with computers nowadays, isn’t it? The tech department pulled this together—you should see what they’re doing with our Web site. Virtual chats with authors, interactive short stories. You really need to embrace technology, Jimbo.”
Jim started to rise from his chair.
“Not so fast, cowboy.” Carl tapped more keys and three additional windows appeared on the screen, each with a different view of lower Manhattan, a shifting crosshair at the center of every one. Emily moved through the upper left screen, oblivious, a duck in a pond.
“Covering the upper left is Bob, my assistant editor. He’s an ex-marine, which comes in handy. Upper right is a buddy of his, I forget his name, but we’ve used him before. An expert marksman. This one here is Steve—he normally handles the romance writers. And this—” Carl’s finger circled the crosshairs in the lower right quadrant. “That’s the summer intern.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Am I?” Carl slammed the top of the laptop down. “You have any idea how many books we sold last year with your name on them?”
“I didn’t write most of those books.”
Spittle almost oozed from the corners of Carl’s mouth. “Take a guess.”
Jim shrugged. “Millions.”
“You’re off by a factor of ten.” Carl took a deep breath and forced a smile, pried open the laptop. “And you’re correct, you only write one book a year, per your contract. But we put your name on those other books, in much bigger type than your co-writers. Want to know why?”
“Because I’m a writer who’s sold a lot of books.”
“Because you’re a brand.” Carl blew out his cheeks. “You like being rich?”
Jim looked around the spacious office, visualized the rest of his three-story town house, one of several he owned in cities around the world. He knew it was a rhetorical question.
“Let me put it in perspective.” Carl pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase and glanced at a row of numbers. “You are the face of a franchise that generated hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade.”
“So?”
“So people get killed for a helluva lot less. This isn’t some corner crack deal we’re talking about here. You think I’m happy about this?”
Jim tried to remember the last time he’d seen Carl happy. An image flashed across his mind of a young editor sitting across from him at breakfast, just two guys talking about writing and books until their eggs got cold.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“I moved on.” Carl worked the muscles in his jaw. “I became the caretaker of the house that Jim built, while you…you stayed behind that damn desk.”
“You’re insane.”
“Jim, pick up a pencil and start writing.” Again the flourish with the watch. “We’ve pissed away seven minutes.”
“I can’t finish the book in half an hour.”
“Bullshit. Two months ago you showed me a rough draft, with only one chapter to go. I know how fast you write, you could bang out the ending with your eyes closed.”
Jim selected one of the pencils and rolled it back and forth, trying not to look at the computer screen. “I don’t know how the story is going to end. Call it writer’s block if you—”
“Writers get blocked, brands don’t.” Carl steepled his hands together. “Besides, we know how it’s going to end. We already discussed it.”
“It doesn’t feel right.” Jim stole a glance at the screen. Emily had moved into the upper right quadrant. Her long brown hair was loose around her shoulders as she hefted the briefcase. “The characters wouldn’t—”